Torn Linen, Cigarettes
by HollowCrawlSpaceBeatingHearts
Summary: Sirius' days after hogwarts and before azkaban with someone trying to figure him out  She is called Virginie and the idea is that she was at hogwarts with MWPP  Review if you fancy. This is what happens when you get nicotine cravings at 4 in the morning.
1. Torn Linen, Cigaretes

'They all say it shouldn't be easy. If it were, what would we work for, what would be the purpose of two people. I wonder if they mean that it should be so fucking bitter' she said it without malice or anger. She said it like it was a thing of utmost simplicity. She said it as if it were beautiful as she absentmindedly smoked a fresh cigarette amidst the debris. Amidst the tangible wreckage of their lives.

He kept his eyes closed. Blind he breathed in and learned the smell of the room. The torn linen and the cigarettes, the soft smell of the down ripped untimely from the pillows she had hurled. The feather soldiers had rested where they fell, only ruffled, he sensed though could not see, by the breaths they took in. Only ruffled by the smoke they blew out. Outside the window of his flat, far from the destruction they wrought upon each other, the November night held bonfires which drifted, mingled with the cleansing cold, through the open window. But underlying the acrid smoke and the clean linen was her. He took another deep breath and caught it again. He didn't need to open his eyes to enjoy her as she lay beside him in his old T-shirt because her smell clung to those moments, part of the darkness.

He made a motion to reach for his cigarettes, still blind to the world of his bedroom and she laughed and finished the action. He felt her put one between his lips, her knuckles grazing his skin as her hands rested on his cheeks to light it. No magic for their habit – the flint of a muggle Zippo cracked in the air and he breathed in a lungful as she placed her head on his chest. Her hair was as soft as the feathers around them, the Zippo in her hand as cold and hard as the world outside. '_But her cheeks are warm' _he thought, still flushed from the drinking. Still flushed from what had followed on its heels. Still burning in his arms. '_she's thin'_ he thought abstractly as he ran a finger up and down her spine from neck to tailbone, '_she's fragile. Was she always like this?'._

'You don't taste bitter' he murmured letting smoke escape from his lips like a warning signal, up, up to the ceiling above. 'That's not what I meant' she said. 'No' he smiled 'but it is what I meant'. He felt her gentle weight lift, he felt the loss of her burning skin. 'fine' she muttered bitterly. He opened his eyes and turned his head to the space now taken by her thin body on the floor. She was pulling on her jeans, her back to him, clod fingers fumbling with clasps, exasperated hands trembling tracks through her short red hair. 'hey' Sirius said softly reaching out and pulling her back by her belt loops, 'what are you doing Vee, don't go'. She wheeled on him in sudden anger : 'look Sirius I'm tired of this. I'm tired of ending up here night after night, tired of having fights about nothing because you don't have anything else to say and I won't say what I should. I'm tired of lying and of being a liar, of being a dirty secret, of being illicit and disgusting and I'm tired of telling myself that I can keep getting by with you and nicotine and firewhiskey. I'm tired of telling myself this is living'. As she spoke she had moved away her hands raking across the skin of her arms leaving livid trails. The same trails on his chest, his back. The same trails she made in his mind. 'I'm tired Sirius. I'm going home'

There was silence in the room. The feathers around her leather cowboy boots fluffed and skitted as she pulled them on, they barely even rippled as he slid out of bed and padded towards her. Very softly he put his arms around her, and rested his sharp face into the crook of her feverish neck. Somewhere the CD she had brought round was still playing. 'Please don't go' he whispered feeling her soft skin against his lips, her muscles tensing against him. Slowly, carefully he put his hands under the hem of her t-shirt, just above the belt line of her jeans and rested his hands against his stomach. 'If it makes a difference, I will beg you' he added simply. His voice was barely audible as he breathed the words into her flesh, as he kissed the soft space behind her earlobe. 'don't do this' she said but her anger was gone and her voice had dropped to match his. She leaned back into the curves of his body letting her head rest against his shoulder her eyes flickering. 'Don't make me fall for the sweetness Sirius, I'm not prepared for what follows it. I cannot keep chasing it's shadow'. He knew the sorrow in her voice should bring guilt. It didn't. The soft light from th fire outside and the candles which burnt low in the room lit up her gaunt face, lit up her bones. '_I'm practically killing her' _he thought '_but I can't help it. The act of the murder is too fucking sweet to resist'._ He dropped his lips to her ear, unable to stop the words he knew he shouldn't say. ' I really want you' and he bit the rim of her ear. He couldn't help biting her, she couldn't help kissing him, he couldn't help drawing blood from her lips.

The blare of the doorbell and they sprang apart. 'fuck's sake' cursed Sirius. Vee reached for his fags on the shelf and lit one. She looked pointedly in the direction of the door of the flat and he left to answer. No words said. She tasted the blood in her mouth and poured another glass of whiskey with shaking hands. The liquid stung. Her cigarette was stained. Voices murmured. She fell a little further from help, she took a little more of the darkness inside.


	2. Begging for Beginnings

Lying awake in her own bed again she is thinking about beginnings. She is trying to fathom how it all began, how she got herself to here. She takes another deep pull on the cigarette in her hands and thinks about that very first night with Sirius, thinks about the night she should have walked away.

'_You don't normally go on a mental night Vee'. His voice rings in her ears.' I thought you were a kept woman. Kept for Remus'. _

_She hates that phrase. There's nothing 'kept' about her. Even on a good night she hates it and tonight is not a good night. So she turns her body around to face the speaker even though she doesn't need to see him to know. Only Sirius talks like that. _'_I'm really far too interesting for that don't you think'. He laughed at that and signalled to the bartender and a bottle of firewhiskey gets plonked unceremoniously between them. 'it was supposed to be a quiet night' she says as she pours herself a drink in the little Camden pub. He isn't really talking to her when he replies: 'and you should be off limits' but he matches her drink for drink. She finds herself looking at him anew, at handsome Sirius. At her mate Sirius who was always the IT boy and she gets a little thrill from the way he is looking at her. Even then she knew that wasn't a good sign._

'_So where is Moony tonight?' he asks. The question is innocent enough but she doesn't miss the brush of his fingertips against the bare skin left by that gap in the back of her T-shirt. The brush of the fingertips of the man she has always loved, even when she hated him. 'Why the fuck should I know?' she counters him but he makes no acknowledgment of the rudeness of her tone or the strangeness of that answer. He only refreshes her drink and smiles. Later she will realise that even then it wasn't the dazzling rock star smile. He gives her the real one, the one which shows his soul just by the way his lips stretch. For now though she just meets it with a grin of her own and says, matter-of-factly 'we broke it off. There's nothing there anymore, not for either of us.' He makes no reply but raises an eyebrow. She suddenly feels like saying it out loud 'I'm in love with an idea which doesn't equal him anymore.' This elicits a dark laugh, brought from his throat: 'and Remus himself?' he queries, his voice low in the little room 'where did his love go?'. She drains her glass and says 'take me somewhere. My flat. Yours. Don't care'. _

_It isn't that he seduces her into asking this. Its more that she wants to talk to him but not there, not in that stupid little pub with its tinkering background music and it's smell of drink and despair. He puts his arms around her and says 'ok. Mine'. They apparate and climb the stairs to his flat his arm never leaving her skin. Once inside he puts two wine glasses down and pours. Even now she remembers that it was chenin blanc and she thinks that this is the wrong way round to be drinking but she clutches the glass like a lifeline. 'He never really loved me Sirius. Not like Lily loves James. He just thought he did. Now he knows that it was our childish hearts not our real ones, our childish flesh that craved each other. We still love, and we still care but not how we should to stay as we were. Does that make any sense?'_

_She can feel his eyes bore into her. 'No.' He says 'but then I have only ever loved one woman in my life and I don't even know what kissing her feels like so I'm no real judge. You and Remus hear each other when no voices speak. I suppose I thought that was the only love to have. You clearly don't think so' she hasn't talked with someone like this for years. She's finding this honesty addictive so she just keeps going. 'I'd still shag him though' she throws in and shoots him a grin 'I mean I may not love the man but he was damn good in bed'. For a moment she wonders if she's gone too far because his face twists with something strange but then he starts laughing and she pushes that look out of her mind. _

_They drink the rest of the bottle. Lots of stories get told that night, as though they're fifteen again and playing I have never on the floor of the common room. But they aren't fifteen. They are two years out of Hogwarts and they work for the ministry and they shouldn't be getting shitfaced on wine and chain-smoking in anyone's kitchen. Least of all on the good wine she thinks. _

_But they keep talking and they keep drinking. She tells him the full story of the night she found out Remus was a werewolf and he tells her about his first time. Then they drink a little more and the stories get darker: 'I had a pregnancy scare last year – I was terrified of being pregnant. I never told him' is followed by 'I no longer know what my mother looks like. I black out the bitches face every time.' She hasn't got a counter to that so she tells him about her training,' after the third day I thought the sun would never shine again. After the fourth I didn't want it too. After the fifth I didn't know what sun was and I wanted to kill my father over and over again for making me this. Two weeks later and I was stronger than any wizard with my bare hands. They gave me power through my own weaknesses.' He pours them another glass of wine and then he says it very quietly. 'I miss my baby brother'. _

_That's the last story that gets told that night because she has no words for the sadness in his voice so she simply takes his face in her hands and kisses him until he kisses her back. There's a strange tenderness in that night that isn't often there anymore. There's even tenderness in the way he fucks her till she's sore and tenderness in the way she begs him for more. She leaves him sleeping peacefully. The note she leaves on the counter simply says: 'Thanks for the wine. Let me know if you want to hear the next story someday'. When they go for coffee with Remus and Lily, James and Peter a few days later they don't give anything away. _

She'll tell him many stories in the days to come and he'll reply with his own. Sometimes they're funny and light, sometimes they're very very naughty and he tells them in the gasps he has while he screws her against her kitchen cabinets. And sometimes, just sometimes, one of them tells another sad one and they find that comforting tenderness again in each other's arms. In a way it's their currency. They are paying for one another with these tales of the head and body, heart and soul. As she stubs out her fag and curls up in the darkness she realises that it is the one's they don't tell that they should be listening to. Like the one about how she fell in love with the notorious playboy that she thought she had seduced, or the one about how she wishes she would let herself stay in his arms sometimes. As she falls asleep she doesn't even know about the most important one of all, the one about how he fell for his best mate's girlfriend when he was sixteen and hasn't ever got free of her.

No. She doesn't know about that one, yet.


End file.
